I’m at a horse show this week, so it seems appropriate to feature equestrian-themed images. I’m having fun playing around with pan blurs – a camera setting where the shutter speed is set to slow. When I’m trying to freeze action I set my camera at 1/2000 second. For pan blurs I slow it down to 1/30 second. This causes all motion to be blurred. The challenge is to ‘pan’ the camera to follow the subject, trying to capture something significant sharp and in focus even as the rest of the image is blurred and streaked from the movement of the camera as it follows the horse and rider.
The successes are few and far between! I might take a thousand images at high speed and discard all but a handful. Below is an example of a fail, to give you an idea. And even when I successfully catch the focus, the position of the subject matters as well. There is no pleasure in viewing an awkward gesture, in focus or not!
Here is the same horse, in the same class – one of the few successes among the many throwaways. The camera autofocus locked in on his head and neck, plus the rider – just enough to give the photo a focal point of clarity while everything else blurs, adding to the impression of motion and speed.
Show jumping is a colorful sport, with brightly painted jumps and gaily waving flags to frame the horse/rider combinations. As a result, in post-processing, I like to amp up the saturation to add to the artistry of the finished image. This one has been added to my online portfolio.
